With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/526329
W hen Vancouver Island's colonial gov- ernor James Douglas acquired the lands around Vic- toria in the early 1850s from four local First Nations—for around $85,000 in today's dollars—he skipped over Chief David Harry's ancestors, the Malahat. Their territory was seized nonethe- less. This past April, Harry—who represents the Malahat Nation, a band of around 400 people on the Saanich Inlet—came a step closer to compensation, signing an agreement-in-principle with the province, along with four other First Nations, for $142 mil- lion and 1,565 hectares of land. In 1992, the NDP government of the day introduced a process to address the question of who owns what land in B.C. The feds, province and First Nations all agreed to come to the negotiat- ing table, with agreements to be hammered out under the auspices of the independent British Columbia Treaty Commission. To incent bands to come and stay at the table, the commission doled out loans—$650 million over two decades. Yet two decades later, the Malahat remain one of the few First Nations bands to have actually signed a treaty. With only four treaties ratified, and fewer than a dozen close to completion, the current BC (ABOVE) NIK WEST JUly 2015 BCBusiness 23 t he mon t hly in for mer TMı "I like to say I'm trying to find the Higgs boson particle of what drives Vancouver real estate. Is it just foreign investment?" –Andy Yan, p.29 "They allow compa- nies to pick bones of weaker First Nations, giving them beads and trinkets in order to give permis- sion for multibillion- dollar projects to go ahead" – Miles Richardson, Haida Nation leader J U LY 2 0 15 Let's Make a Deal A b o r i g i n a l A f f a i r s The B.C. government, frustrated with the slow treaty process, is forging ahead with more one-off economic deals with First Nations. But at what cost? by Jacob Parry INSIDE Cherries to China ... A $15 minimum wage ... real estate reasoning ... Breaking up + more ... A WAY FORWARD Malahat Nation Chief David Michael Harry says treaties can be a path to equality